Splasher 6 Newsletter
Following My Brother's Path
By Ken Heath
Splasher Six Volume 36, Winter 2005, No. 4
Cindy Goodman, Editor
Close This Window
My brother, William (Bill) J. Heath, was born on March 21, 1922 at home on my parent’s homestead in the timbered hills about 5 miles above Locke, Washington. That general area today is used by the Air Force as survival training for pilots to live off the land for a few days alone. He graduated from Newport High School in 1940 and enlisted in the Army Air Corps on January 9, 1942, one month after the Pearl Harbor attack. One week later he was on his way to Sheppard Field in Texas for basic training. He then went to Kelly Field for pilot training and learned to fly solo. On one of his solo flights he was in an area that 3 other training planes were in and the 4 planes "buzzed" workers in a cotton field. The next day the 4 of them were in front of the commander and he informed all of them that they would not be pilots or copilots, but could choose some other position. Bill chose to be a bombardier and he was sent to San Angelo Army Air Field for training. He was in training class #43-5 graduating as 2nd Lt. on April 1, 1943.
Most of my life I have lived with the story the government told my parents about the death of my brother, 2nd Lt. William (Bill) J. Heath, Bombardier on a B-17, was "They were on their way back from Bremen on Oct. 8, 1943 when they were attacked by German fighters. Their Squadron had shot down a German fighter, which was on fire and out of control and collided with my brother’s plane. Both planes went down on fire and out of control. No parachutes."
Since then I have found out they were on their way to Bremen with a full bomb load.
Three years ago this coming Memorial Day my wife Carol and I went to the cemetery to put flowers on her father’s grave and as we left we noticed a WWII exhibit by the office, which we went to look at. Several people were dressed in old military uniforms and there were exhibits and memorabilia. In the center was a large table with WWII type books, which people could look at. I picked up only one book, "Flying Fortress" by Ed Jablonski and opened it. I WAS LOOKING AT A PICTURE OF A FLIGHT OF B –17’S OVER BREMEN ON OCTOBER 8, 1943.
I had made a few half-hearted attempts before to find information on my brother but had found none. Seeing this picture was to me a special sign. At this time I did not know what group he was with. I drove to my older sister’s home and asked her and to see if she had any information. She finally found an old envelope with Bill’s overseas address. I then found out he was in the 100th Bomb Group, 351st Squadron.
I searched on my webtv unit the 100th BG web page (www.100thbg.com) and found some information that I had not known before. I discovered the B-17 Bill was lost on was named the "Marie Helena", (42-3386 EP-H), and that the Gormley crew (2nd Lt. Raymond J. Gormley) was on their 7th mission when they were lost. After they crossed the enemy, the group encountered aggressive fighter attacks. Fifteen minutes into the battle, two FW-190’s flew through the formation and one FW-190 collided with the Marie Helena. A huge fireball erupted and both planes broke up. The wreckage of the Marie Helena came down near the small village of Bellingwolde, The Netherlands. The entire crew of ten were KIA.
The following is from the 100th BG Message Board – MPFaley:
B17F sn# 42-3386 EP-H "Marie Henela", 100BG, 351st BS.
2nd Lt. Raymond J. Gormley P
2nd Lt. Edward J. Fox CP
2nd Lt. Peter T. Motta Nav
2nd Lt. William J. Heath Bom
T/Sgt Jay B McPhee TTE
T/Sgt Dale A Von Seggern ROG
T/Sgt Donald R Hilton BTG
S/Sgt Charles Presley WG
S/Sgt William A. Avery, Jr WG
S/Sgt Clay E Rife TG
Marie Helena was rammed by a FW 190 flown by Oblt. Erich Hondt. Both aircraft went down and disintegrated in mid-air, the wreckage falling over a wide area near Bellingwolde, 28 miles east of Groningen, Holland at 15.30 hrs.
Most of the bodies were burnt to 3 degrees. Lt. Gormley, Lt. Fox, T/Sgt Von Seggern, T/Sgt McPhee, and S/Sgt Presley were buried in the protestant churchyard Bellingwolde.
Lt. Motta, Lt. Heath, S/Sgt Hilton, S/Sgt Avery Jr, and S/Sgt Rife were buried on 18 Oktober 1943 in the nearby Lutheran cemetery at Leer, Germany. S/Sgt Presley’s body was found a week later in canal Ron-Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
From the MACR report: "Top Turret gunner Sgt. John Ehlen on Piccadilly Lily reported the FW 190 crashed into the left wing root. Gormley had been flying a wing position and the whole formation was in a flat turn. The FW 190 passed over our wing and crashed into eh B-17 (Marie Helena) on the turn."
Walter "Chief" Moreno flying nearby in Messie Bessie noted "Red nose FW 190 crashed into ship #386 and both went down in flames 20 miles SE of Emden." The shattered remains of Marie Helena crashed near Bellingwolde, Friesland." MPF]
I also found the chronology of the Oct. 8, 1943 raid to Bremen in Marvin "Red" Bowman’s S-2 Diary, page 3. It tells what time they started the engines, the time of take-off and in what order, what time they left the English coast, which planes aborted and why, the time they crossed the enemy coast, and what happened to the planes that were lost.
The 100th BG lost 7 B-17’s on this mission to Bremen, one of which was the famous "Piccadilly Lily" flown by the Crew of Capt. Thomas E. Murphy. Two days later on October 10, 1943, thirteen B-17’s were on a raid to Munster and only one returned. "Royal Flush" flown by 2nd Lt. Robert "Rosie" Rosenthal, made it back to Thorpe Abbotts on two engines with two severely wounded on board. These were the days of no long-range fighter protection for the bombers over Germany. October 8-14, 1943 would later become known as "Black Week" for the 8th Air Force due to severe bomber losses. It was during this time that the 100th Bomb Group earned its nickname "The Bloody Hundredth."
I also discovered on the 100th message board, towards the bottom of the page posted months earlier, a message from Paul West asking if anyone had pictures of the Marie Helena crew as they had none. Guess what! I had some and sent them in to Mike Faley and they are now on the 100th website. Thank you for answering all my questions, Mike.
I searched the internet for information of the small village where the Marie Helena crashed, hoping to find a website. I happened to get on a website of WWII people trying to contact others. I read one message of a man from the Netherlands trying to find a Scottish soldier in the British Military who lived for a time in his parents’ home when they liberated them from the Germans. I noticed on the end of his e-mail address nl, which meant Netherlands. On the spur of the moment I e-mailed him asking him if the village of Bellingwolde had an e-mail address. He wanted to know why, I told Mr. Bert Buitenhuis of Zwolle my story.
Mr. Buitenhuis then made many phone calls to the village and contacted officials in the city hall telling them that I was looking for information of the crash. Netherlands has privacy laws and somehow Mr. Buitenhuis prevailed by proving to them he was getting the information for me and obtained the archives of the crash and mailed them to me. One set was in German and one set was in Dutch. I found a high school German teacher and had her translate it and it so happened that her mother, who lives in Tacoma, lived in Bremen at the time of this air raid.
The archives were several pages of eyewitness reports of several people telling what they saw of the flaming B-17 coming down and what they witnessed at the crash site. Some of the report is a little repetitious but very interesting. It tells of the Dutch civil air defense arriving and guarding the wreckage and the bodies until the German Police arrived and took over. Some of the bodies had ID and some of them did not. One of the German soldiers took a watch from one of the bodies and looked at it and threw it back because it was broken. It also tells that the five crewmembers buried in Bellingwolde received a Christian burial and oak crosses were put on the graves along with 2 steel helmets. I have a picture of the 5 graves with the crosses on them taken by a Dutch woman during the war under German occupation. She is now 92 years old. At that time they were buried in a new area of the cemetery with no other graves. The Germans took the other five crewmembers across the border to Leer, Germany, and they were buried there. I have learned recently that Bill was one of the five taken there. I still have not found out why they were taken to Germany. I now know which crewmembers were buried in Bellingwolde and which ones were taken to Leer.
The archives also reported of a steel helmet with my brother’s name and serial number on it found near the crash site. I was surprised as I had never heard of or seen pictures of aircrews wearing steel helmets so I sent an e-mail to Mike Faley to ask him about them. He replied that the photo-ops were always done before or after missions and that is why you never see a picture of them. These were Flak Helmets worn by the crews as they entered enemy territory. Some of the early helmets had to have holes cut into them to accommodate the headsets.
I posted a short 60th year memorial message on the 100th message board for the crew of Marie Helena on October 8, 2003. I received a message back "We in England appreciate the sacrifices made by many brave Americans so we can be free today". This is how I came to know and appreciate Mr. Ron Leigh. Later, Mr. Leigh sent me a fist sized piece of the main runway from Thorpe Abbotts telling me that this piece was from about the place on the runway where a fully loaded B-17 would be struggling to lift off and become airborne. It is now on my mantle. Thank you again, Ron. He also suggested I get the book "We’re Poor Little Lambs" by Paul Andrews from the 100th’s Jan Riddling. I am glad I did as it tells of the last mission of Piccadilly Lily and mentions what happened to the Marie Helena. They both went down within 15 minutes of each other. The book also has a diagram of the 100th formation that day, top view, head-on view, and side view. It shows the Piccadilly Lily ahead and above the Marie Helena in formation which fits the description of when the 2 FW-190’s fly down through the formation as on the Gormley crew page on the 100ths website.
I was curious about the title of the book "We’re Poor Little Lambs". The movie "Twelve O’Clock High" had some background music of "We’re poor little lambs and have lost our way, baa, baa, baaa". It is called "The Whiffenpoof Song" and I searched and found that it came from Rudyard Kipling’s writing of "Gentlemen-Rankers". Read it, about British soldiers overseas in the late 1800’s. A couple of lines from it are " God help us, for we knew the worst too young!" and "And we die, and none can tell Them where we died".
Carol and I thought that at our age we would never be able to make the trip overseas as she is partially handicapped and uses a cane. She cannot stand very long or walk very far and I would also have to take care of the luggage. It crossed our mind in 2004 to go but then we found out that she needed surgery so we could not go that year. In 2005 we decided that if we were ever going to make the trip it had to be this year because Carol’s condition is getting worse. We had never been overseas before and the trip was rather intimidating to us. We were still undecided but the encouragement from our family, from Mr. Buitenhuis in The Netherlands, and from Mr. Ron Leigh in England made up our minds to go for it. Without the help of these two wonderful people we had met on the internet, this trip would not have been possible for us. Before we left home we did not realize how much we would have to depend on them. Also we would not have been able to make this trip without wheel chair assistance at the airports.
We left Spokane on a United flight at 6:55am April 27 to Chicago with a five and a half hour layover before leaving on a flight to Amsterdam. During our overseas flight I got into a conversation with a flight steward and he became interested in the reason for our trip. I showed him the chronology of the Bremen raid and he was amazed at the detailed account that I had been able to find on the internet after sixty-two years. Later, as we started to descend, he stopped by our seat and said the pilot would like to talk to us after landing if we didn’t mind. We talked to the pilot and he was very interested in seeing the chronology of the raid and hearing the reason for our trip. We would be very surprised to see him again on our flight home.
At 9:15 am on April 28, 2005 we landed in Amsterdam and Bert and Rie Buitenhuis had driven 90 miles from their home in Zwolle, and were there to meet us. We introduced ourselves to each other for the first time. With their help we had booked a hotel for 9 days in Zwolle and during that time he drove us every day to interesting places to see within driving distance of his home. Two days after we arrived it was necessary for Carol to seek medical care for a minor emergency and Bert very kindly found her the help she needed. One of the very interesting places Bert and Rie took us was the beautiful fishing village of Urk. Many years ago Urk was a tiny island fishing village in the middle of the Zuider Zee. When the Dutch people reclaimed the land from the sea it became a small fishing village on the edge of the mainland. There is a viewpoint that looks out over the North Sea and has a statue of a fisherman’s wife with her back to the sea and she is looking over her shoulder waiting for her husband to return. Along the wall are plaques that have the year, name, and age of the fishermen that lost their lives from this village. Some years, whole families of men were lost. The plaques go back to the year of 1717. We were impressed with The Netherlands. Everything was very clean, no litter, good roads and beautiful homes and farms. No dilapidated buildings. Buildings hundreds of years old almost looked like new. The homes are mostly brick with tile roofs and a few old-fashioned homes and windmills have straw roofs.
While at the hotel in Zwolle we met a couple at breakfast on two different mornings, Meta and Bram Sneep, who lived near Amsterdam. Two days after they left, we received a letter at our hotel from them asking us to call them when we passed through Amsterdam again on our way to England or as we passed through on our way home. We would see them again later.
Mr. Bert Buitenhuis had made an appointment with Mr. Beeno Stikker, to visit the Marie Helena crash site at 3:00pm on May 5th, which was the 60th anniversary of the Liberation Day of the Netherlands by the Allies. Mr. Stikker is the owner of the farm where Bills’ plane crashed and he was a boy 11 years old and was coming home from school when it happened.. When he found out we were coming he made plans with Bert for us to meet at his home. When we arrived, we were greeted by Mr. and Mrs. Stikker, their son and daughter and other guests they had invited. The Burgomaster of the village, Mr. Drenth, presented Carol with a beautiful bouquet. After lunch we went in several cars out to the crash site in the field. Mr. Stikkers son stood in the exact spot of the wreckage in an ankle high green cornfield. The corn was not in rows and in the area where he was standing you could see an oval landmark of corn a shade lighter green than the rest. Sixty-two years after the crash it still showed the area. When Mr. Stikker tills the soil he still finds small bits of the B-17.
Another guest at the luncheon was Mr. Chris Timmer who investigated many WWII crash sites since about 1986, including this one. He has one of the engines from the Marie Helena in a museum in northern Netherlands. He had brought some small pieces of the plane he had found here for me to see. There were small pieces of metal, bolts, two bullets, small bits of Plexiglas, small globs of melted aluminum and other small unidentifiable pieces. The largest piece of Plexiglas was one half inch thick, one and one quarter inches wide and about five and one half inches long. I asked Mr. Timmer if I could possibly have it and he graciously gave it to me. I told myself that it was part of Bill’s bombardier compartment, the Plexiglas nose of the Marie Helena. Later, I will prove myself right. I could hardly believe that I had a piece of Plexiglas that Bill had been looking through 62 years ago. Another guest at the luncheon, Mr. Kuiper, was 25 years old when the crash happened and had to run to get out of the way of some of the wreckage falling out of the sky. A blade from one of the props hit a tree and imbedded itself in the ground close to him which he tried to pull out but was unable to do so. At one end of the field is a row of trees along a small canal. Fifty meters beyond the canal is the German border. On one side of the field is a row of trees along a country road and beyond it one of the engines of the plane was found. It is now in a Dutch museum. On the opposite side of the field is a row of trees you cannot see through and beyond that is a large Dutch brick barn where the tail section of the plane landed. I visited the barn, which still had a repaired crack in the wall from the tail section falling against it. I also visited the village cemetery, which now has hundreds of headstones and grave markers close together. In the middle of them was a small grassy spot. That spot is where five of the Marie Helena crewmembers were buried during the war. Those sites have never been used again.
We were the only family members of the "Marie Helena" crew to ever visit the crash site.
Two days later, on May 8, 2005, VE Day of 60 years ago, our Dutch friends, Bert and Rie Buitenhuis, drove us to Ardennes American Cemetery 12 miles SW of Liege, Belgium. The day President Bush was at Margraten American Cemetery in The Netherlands with thousands of people, we were 25 miles away at Ardennes. We visited my brother’s gravesite. My wife and I and our friends who drove us there, were the only visitors in the Ardennes Cemetery where more than 5000 Americans are buried. We went into the cemetery office and told the escort which gravesites we would like to visit. He then looked up the location and took us in a golf cart. He told us to wait in the cart while he located it. He came and escorted us to the Bill’s gravesite. The escort had rubbed damp sand in the engraving so we could easily read it. The crosses are all white and it is very difficult to read the engraving so that is why he rubs damp sand on it. Carol and Mr. Buitenhuis each said a prayer and we laid the beautiful flowers she had received at the crash site luncheon on Bill’s grave. I spoke to my brother that day. We were the first next of kin to ever visit his gravesite in 62 years. The visit to Bill’s gravesite at Ardennes was a very emotional time for us.
The "Marie Helena" navigator Peter Motta is buried about 100 feet away from my brother. They are both buried in Section….D.
Ardennes American Memorial Cemetery is a very impressive place. The cemetery has been kept in beautiful condition through the years. The large memorial building is very nice inside with an altar at the far end with a tall golden angel on the back wall. The other 3 walls have huge maps of the war, one of which is devoted to the Air Force showing the routes from England to the different targets in Germany.
Bert and Rie drove us to our hotel near the airport in Amsterdam as we were to leave the next morning for England. We did not expect to see Bert and Rie again. How can we say goodbye to two people who we have known for such a short time but who did so much for us. We can never thank them enough. In those ten days we had formed a very close friendship. Thank you again, Bert and Rie.
We flew into Heathrow and it is SW of London and the train station we needed to go to Diss to go to Thorpe Abbotts was in the NE part of London. It worried us at the time as we had made an appointment to meet Ron Leigh at Diss early in the afternoon. We took the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station and then the tube to Liverpool Street Station and got on the train to Diss. We enjoyed seeing the countryside from the train as I have always felt close to England because both my parents were born there, my mother in Uttoxeter and my father in Norton, close to York.
We got off the train at Diss and it left us on the platform looking at the small station a short distance away with not a person in sight. It reminded us of an old western movie. We turned around and there was a pedestrian overpass across the tracks and Ron was just coming down the stairs. What a relief to see him! He helped us with our luggage to his car and he took us to our hotel where he was staying also.
We settled at the hotel with a short rest and then Ron took us on a drive around the area. We visited a pottery shop and large kiln, then stopped at the Duke of Marlborough for some tea and scones. Ron picked up his friend, Jim Gintner, and they showed us some of the sites around Thorpe Abbotts. The dilapidated and overgrown remnants of a few Quonset huts, what is left of the taxiway, the 351st shower room that Bill would have used, the short runway drainage ditch that used to go along the main runway to drain rainwater, and where the main runway used to be. There, Ron had a recording and put the headphones on me and played a recording of a B17 start, taxi (with the squealing brakes), take off and land. I had a perfect picture of it in my mind. Then we all went to the Half Moon Inn, got better acquainted and had a very nice supper.
The next day Ron took us to the Thorpe Abbotts 100th Museum. We were there all day looking at all the different exhibits about WWII. They were all very impressive to us. We talked with Carol Batley and she told us much information we had not known before. We stood on the top of the control tower and could see what is left of the taxiway and where the main runway used to be. Bill’s plane, the Marie Helena was assigned to hardstand #1, which would have been all the way down the field on the right hand side. I could imagine him taxiing all the way from one end of the field, past the control tower, to the other end for take-off. With Ron’s recording I could imagine it happening right then.
It was late afternoon and almost time to leave after a wonderful day at the 100th Museum when a biplane flew over and started doing loops one after the other for several minutes and then flew off. We started to say our goodbyes to Carol and getting ready to go when the biplane reappeared and did many more loops. We were about the only visitors there this late in the afternoon so we told ourselves that the pilot had put on the show just for us. We were sure Carol Batley knew who the pilot was and we hope she told him "Thank You" from us.
After leaving the museum Ron spotted a fish and chips place along the way and we stopped and enjoyed some authentic fish and chips. Ron drove us back to our hotel and made sure everything was ok and then he had to drive home in the evening as it was most of the way across England and must have been a several hour drive for him.
Carol and I cannot thank Ron Leigh enough. He had met us on the internet, had to change his schedule, get time off work, drive most of the way across England, baby-sat us for 2 days and showed us the countryside and Thorpe Abbotts, Then he had to drive back across most of England to go home. All this and more. We appreciated it very much and are very grateful to him. How often does one find a gentleman like him and to do what he did for us. Thank you again, Ron.
We originally had only booked 2 days at the Park Hotel in Diss and booked 2 more as we had not made plans for the next few days before we had to be at our hotel at Heathrow Sunday night. We went into Diss and visited their beautiful old church and while we were there we met a lady who had her own WWII story to tell. She had been engaged to a British airman and two months before she was to be married her sweetheart was killed also in a mid-air collision. We looked through some of the shops on our way to the mere by the center of town. We found out that our hotel in Diss was booked full on Saturday and the proprietor, Robin Twigge, had another small hotel in Thetford, a short distance away where he would take us later and we could catch the bus the next morning to Heathrow.
The evening at Thetford we took a short walk along the small river Little Ouse, next to the Anchor Hotel where we were staying. We met an American, Daniel Galbreath, with his 3 small children who were watching the swans in the water. He was retired from the Air Force and his wife worked for Civil Service at Mildenhal, which now has the 100th square D logo. We told him a little of the history of the D and about my brother and Thorpe Abbotts Museum which he had not previously known about. He was very interested and I understand that they have visited it since. I recently received a very nice poster from him, showing a KC-135 refueling tanker with the square D on the tail and a ghostly B-17 with a square D on its tail.
Early the next morning (Sunday) Robin Twigge cooked our breakfast and served it to us before the regular breakfast hours, and helped carry some of our luggage to the bus stop behind the hotel. Everywhere we went on this trip, people went out of their way to help us, just as Robin Twigge had done for us. We appreciated everything he had done for us and would like to thank him again. We enjoyed the scenic three and a half hour bus ride through the English countryside on our way to Heathrow. We left our luggage at the hotel and took the tube to Piccadilly Circus where it seemed to us that in several minutes you could see people from all over the world. We took an open-air tour bus around London and saw the sights and the contrast in architecture before returning to our hotel as we were flying to Amsterdam the next morning.
We arrived in Amsterdam in the early afternoon and took a shuttle bus to our hotel, checked in and just got to our room and a minute later there was a knock on our door. We thought it was the clerk from the desk but when we opened the door it was Bert and Rie Buitenhuis . They had driven couple of hours to see and surprise us on our last day in Holland, as we were to fly back to the USA the next day. They had stayed out of sight and watched us while we checked in and went to our room. Needless to say, we were very surprised to see them. We visited and invited them to have supper at the hotel with us so we could visit longer. While we were visiting with Bert and Rie, Meta and Bram Sneep, who lived nearby, came to surprise us also on our last night in Holland. We had met them at breakfast in the hotel in Zwolle 2 weeks earlier. When we passed through on our way to England, we called them but were unable to meet with them because Meta was ill, so we hoped to catch them on our way back through before we left for home. We introduced them to Bert and Rie and asked them to join the four of us for dinner. They agreed to stay and we had a very wonderful dinner and evening together with our new friends.
We were visiting and having coffee and dessert when two men from two tables away, came over to our table. One of them said "I thought I heard a Washington accent over here". I said "I didn’t know there was a Washington accent" and he replied, "Oh yes there is". I asked him where he was from and he said, "LA but I was born and raised in Seattle". About that time we all happened to look at the second man that had come over and Carol said "I know you, what is your name?" The man replied, "David" and Carol said "David Carradine!" Both men wanted to know why we were over there and we told them part of our story and they seemed very interested in it. We had our picture taken with them and they went back to their table. We visited a little more with our friends and had a very wonderful evening and then we all said our last goodbyes. Carol and I stood by the entrance to the hotel and everyone waved as they drove past, then turned around and came back for one last pass. It was very hard to let them go.
The next morning we flew home and when we landed in Chicago and taxied to the gate, we paused for a few moments in our seats until the rush of passengers were over and we went off the plane. As we did we almost bumped into the pilot, we looked at him and he looked at us. We recognized each other, he was the same pilot we had on the way over three weeks earlier, and he wanted to know all about our trip of following my brother’s path in WWII. As we slowly walked the long halls going to the passport area, he was very interested in the story Carol and I told him. We had a six-hour layover until we could get our flight back to Spokane, arriving at our airport at 10:30pm May 17 where we were met by our daughter and son-in-law, Sherry and Pete, who drove us home.
That was the end to our once-in-a-lifetime trip that we had thought we would never make.
We are very grateful for the outstanding treatment we received from the Dutch people and from the English people, and the many people we met along the way.
Carol and I felt that God was with us on this trip, Ken and Carol Heath
Since then: Mr. Bert Buitenhuis in the Netherlands had a website on the internet and on it he had a page in memorandum about my brother, Bill, with much information. (It is presently down and under construction). One of the pictures he had on it was a close-up picture of our "sign-in" name and city we were from in the guest book at Ardennes Cemetery. A few days after we were home, Bert sent us a message and told us the nephew of one of Marie Helena waist gunners (William A. Avery Jr.) had been to The Netherlands on business and happened to find Bert’s website. He told Bert that he could hardly believe the information he had and said that the family had none of this information and were excited to find it and there was a brother and sister still living of William Avery. A day or two later I received a call from Vernon Avery of Michigan, the younger brother of William. I was surprised and I asked him how he got my phone number and he said he saw the picture of the visitors sign-in on Bert’s website and got it through the white pages on the internet. I forwarded him all the websites with information and sent him a copy of the translation of the archives of the crash. He was very happy and thankful to receive them.